1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments herein generally relate to multiple printers systems, and more particularly to a method, service, and computer program product, that provides feedback to the user regarding printers that may be better than the printer selected by the user.
2. Description of Related Art
With the ability to utilize multiple printers through various print servers, management of print jobs through such systems is gaining importance. For example, with respect to automated systems that balance printing loads within a network multi-printer system, European Patent Number 1,224,529, also assigned International Publication Number WO 01/29648, (the complete disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference) discloses print load balancing, cluster printing and color, black-and-white page splitting. Such systems automatically route print jobs to the most available printer (without user input or feedback) based on factors such as color, black-and-white printing, printing page per minute rates, the number of pages in a job, size and number of copies in a job.
Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 6,529,286 (the complete disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference) discloses a dynamically shared printing interface in a computer network that routes print jobs to printers in a user defined preferred printer list based upon a printer's capability to print a certain job when the print job is requested. In this conventional system, a user sends a print job to the dynamically shared printing interface that calculates the estimated workload to print the job designated as a task allocation property, sends a multi-cast to the printers in the preferred printer list requesting printer capability information designated as a printer power index (PPI), receives the printer power index from the printers in the preferred printer list that calculate their own capability, compares the printer power index with the task allocation property, routes the print job whose printer power index best matches with the task allocation property and notifies the user of the printer to which the job is routed. The printers in the preferred printer list calculate their own printer power indexes based upon the printer engine speed, printer memory size, number, size and complexity of print jobs waiting in the printer queue at the instance the multi-cast is received. In another aspect the dynamically shared printing interface re-routes a print job if the original printer develops an error and cannot print the job, by re-sending a multi-cast to the other printers in the preferred printer list requesting printer power indexes, receiving printer power indexes from the printers that re-calculate their printer power index, compare the task allocation property with the resent printer power indexes, re-route the print job whose printer power index best matches the task allocation property and re-notify the user of the printer to which the job is re-routed.
However, such systems provide alternate printers recommendation in a static way by having an administrator set up custom messages to be displayed when defined conditions (also called print policies) are triggered against the submitted print job. Also, such systems consume extensive administration overhead because they need to continuously maintain alternate printer configurations. Other solutions replace operating system (OS) native printing components. The embodiments herein can be leveraged in a manner that provides efficient printing functionality in an intelligent way without the need for replacing standard print components.